BEST SELLERS: APRIL 5, 1987

Published: April 5, 1987

$ Weeks This Last On Week Week List FICTION 1 1 3 FINE THINGS, by Danielle Steel. (Delacorte, $18.95.) The vicissitudes of a son of the 60's on his way to the 80's. 2 2 9 WINDMILLS OF THE GODS, by Sidney Sheldon. (Morrow, $18.95.) The nightmarish experiences that befall a woman and her family after her appointment as Ambassador to Rumania. 3 3 10 THE EYES OF THE DRAGON, by Stephen King. (Viking, $18.95.) A fairy tale, complete with an aged king, two princes, an evil wizard and a mouse. 4 4 4 BOLT, by Dick Francis. (Putnam, $17.95.) The jockey-hero of ''Break In'' has to contend with a romantic crisis, a family feud and an international arms-selling intrigue. 5 6 2 DESTINY, by Sally Beauman. (Bantam, $19.95.) The 30-year romance of a couple with diverse backgrounds and ambitions. 6 5 36 RED STORM RISING, by Tom Clancy. (Putnam, $19.95.) The West tries to stave off the Russians in World War III. 7 11 27 THE PRINCE OF TIDES, by Pat Conroy. (Houghton Mifflin, $19.95.) Complex family relationships in South Carolina's low country and New York City. 8 7 12 NIGHT OF THE FOX, by Jack Higgins. (Simon & Schuster, $17.95.) A mission to keep D-Day plans from being discovered by the Germans. 9 13 23 FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER, by Stephen Coonts. (Naval Institute, $15.95.) Navy aviators at war over Vietnam. 10 10 7 OUTBREAK, by Robin Cook. (Putnam, $17.95.) Tracking down a mysterious disease that strikes certain physicians and their patients. 11 8 30 IT, by Stephen King. (Viking, $22.95.) Childhood horrors haunt six men and a woman who grew up in a small Maine town. 12 9 11 THE PANIC OF '89, by Paul Erdman. (Doubleday, $17.95.) A financial wizard undertakes to defuse the crisis besetting Wall Street and the American economy. 13* 1 SANTORINI, by Alistair MacLean. (Doubleday, $16.95.) Espionage, treachery and retrieval of a sunken atom bomb in the Aegean. 14 15 22 WHIRLWIND, by James Clavell. (Morrow, $22.95.) Iran during the month following the Shah's departure. 15 14 3 THE RED WHITE AND BLUE, by John Gregory Dunne. (Simon & Schuster, $18.95.) America during the past 25 years, seen through the lives of a rich and powerful California family. Weeks This Last On Week Week List NONFICTION 1 1 14 A SEASON ON THE BRINK, by John Feinstein. (Macmillan, $16.95.) A chronicle of one season spent with the Indiana University basketball team. 2 2 6 COMMUNION, by Whitley Strieber. (Beech Tree/ Morrow, $17.95.) A professional writer tells of the visits of ''intelligent nonhumans'' to his family's place in upstate New York. 3 11 3 BOONE, by T. Boone Pickens Jr. (Houghton Mifflin, $18.95.) The autobiography of an oilman and corporation-takeover entrepreneur. 4* 7 18 A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AMERICA. (Collins Publishers, $39.95.) The nation on May 2, 1986, as recorded in pictures by 200 photojournalists. 5 3 7 THE FITZGERALDS AND THE KENNEDYS, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. (Simon & Schuster, $22.95.) From the Boston slums of Irish immigrants to the White House: three generations of a family. 6* 4 48 FATHERHOOD, by Bill Cosby. (Dolphin/ Doubleday, $14.95.) Anecdotes and ruminations from the television star and father of five. 7 6 8 ECHOES IN THE DARKNESS, by Joseph Wambaugh. (Perigord/Morrow, $18.95.) A case involving the murder of a Pennsylvania high school teacher and the disappearance of her two children. 8* 5 8 THE FATAL SHORE, by Robert Hughes. (Knopf, $24.95.) Australia from penal colony to its gradual emergence as a flourishing nation. 9 8 5 INTIMATE PARTNERS, by Maggie Scarf. (Random House, $18.95.) Changing patterns in love and marriage. 10 9 3 BETTY: A Glad Awakening, by Betty Ford with Chris Chase. (Doubleday, $16.95.) A former First Lady's recovery from alcoholism and drug abuse. 11 10 56 YOU'RE ONLY OLD ONCE! by Dr. Seuss. (Random House, $9.95.) A checkup at the Golden Years Clinic in pictures and rhyme. 12 1 LOVE, MEDICINE & MIRACLES, by Bernie S. Siegel. (Harper & Row, $15.95.) A surgeon stresses the importance of the patient's mind and emotions in treating serious illness. 13 13 12 THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE, by Jane Wagner. (Harper & Row, $15.95.) Acerb observations on life today; script of the show starring Lily Tomlin. 14 15 26 THE RECKONING, by David Halberstam. (Morrow, $19.95.) The crisis in the American automobile industry and Japan's role in it. 15 1 JOHNSON V. JOHNSON, by Barbara Goldsmith. (Knopf, $18.95.) The courtroom war between six children and their stepmother over a half-billion- dollar estate. Weeks This Last On Week Week List ADVICE, HOW-TO AND MISCELLANEOUS 1 1 26 MEN WHO HATE WOMEN & THE WOMEN WHO LOVE THEM, by Susan Forward and Joan Torres. (Bantam, $16.95.) How to cope with overbearing men. 2 2 23 THE FRUGAL GOURMET COOKS WITH WINE, by Jeff Smith. (Morrow, $16.95.) Recipes to be prepared at moderate cost. 3 5 2 HOW TO BE YOUR OWN NUTRITIONIST, by Stuart M. Berger. (Morrow, $16.95.) Ways to create a diet regimen for health and energy. 4 3 42 THE ROTATION DIET, By Martin Katahn. (Norton, $15.95.) A regimen based on the Vanderbilt University Weight Management Program. 5 4 82 WEBSTER'S NINTH NEW COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY. (Merriam-Webster, $14.95.) A standard reference work in a 1983 revision. The listings above are based on computer-processed sales figures from 2,000 bookstores in every region of the United States, statistically adjusted to represent sales in all bookstores. In Advice and How-to, five titles are listed because, beyond that point, sales in this category are not generally large enough to make a longer list statistically reliable. *An asterisk before a book's title indicates that its sales, weighted to reflect the bookselling industry nationally, are barely distinguishable from those of the book above. And Bear in Mind (Editors' choices of other recent books of particular interest) ARTFUL PARTNERS: Bernard Berenson and Joseph Duveen, by Colin Simpson. (Macmillan, $22.50.) An international art world with all the moral nicety of an underwater feeding frenzy, and the two biggest fish in partnership, one of whom, Bernard Berenson, is indicted here for an appetite that unscrupulousness helped sate. BERNARD BERENSON: The Making of a Legend, by Ernest Samuels. (Belknap/Harvard University, $25.) Greedy for exquisite sensations, B.B., the subject of this official biography, failed to write the book of art criticism he owed his generation, but would he have lived this life if he had? SONG IN A WEARY THROAT: An American Pilgrimage, by Pauli Murray. (Harper & Row, $23.95.) This posthumously published autobiography of a black woman writer (and later lawyer) born in 1910 could be every black American's history to some degree. VISIONS AND NIGHTMARES: America After Reagan, by Robert Lekachman. (Macmillan, $19.95.) An angry professor of economics sees an America bewitched by the magic of self-enrichment, blind to the commonweal. AN ARROW IN THE WALL: Selected Poetry and Prose, by Andrei Voznesensky. Edited by William Jay Smith and F. D. Reeve. (Holt, $22.95.) Translated by a number of hands (including W. H. Auden and Stanley Kunitz), this book represents the best attempt so far to bring a contemporary Russian poet into a Western context. IN THE CITY, by Joan Silber. (Viking, $16.95.) This second novel, about a minimalist heroine in a room of her own in 1920's New York, has some of the immediacy of a tale written in the 20's. THE MISALLIANCE, by Anita Brookner. (Pantheon, $14.95.) As always, Ms. Brookner's prose is crisp and unerring, her gifts as a psychologist of the wounded woman's heart formidable.